Chapter 52:

At the atreola’s southern end, near the bio-dome’s edge, stood a dais upon which an eternal fire was hearthed. At the northern end was the rubber forge, beyond which grew the shelterbelt. Lines of rubber booksleeves hung from the shelterbelt’s branches. Rajani ran her fingers along the bark of one of the trees. Overhead, a torrent of rain gushed onto the canopy of florets and leaves that covered the bio-dome’s frame. Fat drops, escaping through gaps between the foliage, smacked into the dirt beside her.

She was glad she had insisted on slipping out here alone. With the solitude, Rajani could let the tightness in her chest be released. She bowed her head and replayed the humiliation in her mind, struggling over and over again with a man she was no match for.

There was no steam or sacred pool by the hanging library, but Rajani still knew to give her pain to the gods. “Pain is purifying,” she whispered, quoting one of her favorite lines from the Jinkari Table Chronicles. “Accept it, give it up to Gather. Let it lead you to become your truest self.”

It doesn’t mean anything about who you are, the god words said. The pain is a test. Do you still believe you belong to Hunt’s Table, even when you’re not treated like it? Or will you let the pain name you?

“I still believe,” Rajani whispered.

But it wasn’t true. The pain and shame weren’t leaving her. And with them returned the doubts about being a hunter at all. Don’t forget what your father did for you, the Jinkari adults always told her. Rajani had sworn she would make Papai’s death worth it. But should she have? Should she still, now, when she was reaping the bitter rewards of submission to a fate she had never wanted?

All her suppressed longing was welling to the surface. Gather and Hunt, for how long had Rajani yearned to join the lodge mothers in their rhythm? To be part of the thread that held Cursed life together?

And now this. As a young woman, as a myxte Cursed, Rajani’s position among the hunters was already somewhat tenuous. Now that Chief had marked her as someone who could be demeaned without consequence, more disrespect would likely follow.

There was a noise behind her. Rajani turned and saw next to the rubber forge the hunter who had asked if she was okay. The defeat in his face vanished under a mask as soon as he saw Rajani was there too.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” Rajani replied.

He gave her a wry glance. “Probably the same thing as you – or similar, anyway.”

“Did Chief –” Rajani started to ask, then stopped. She remembered now. This hunter was Jiat of the Mehen Table, Gipth’s nephew. The girl at the holy place was his cousin.

“What happened?” she asked.

Jiat was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I think my uncle and Chief are very similar. They’re both myxte Cursed – myxte Xhota, even – and of the same generation. And they’re both scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of the old-Tabled Cursed turning on us.”

Rajani pondered Jiat’s words. Us – the myxte Cursed – the descendants of overbelters.

For a hundred years now, overbelters had been emigrating to the Cursed urb from inside the shelterbelt. Before then, the Cursed had been old-Tabled, and old-Tabled alone. Every Cursed citizen lived under the shadow of that history. Her mother, her aunt and uncle, Kebet’s parents, any myxte Cursed over a certain age, they were all careful around the old-Tabled Cursed. We have to prove that having overbelter blood doesn’t make us any less Cursed, they would always say. Even Mamai, born and raised in the Cursed urb, believed so.

Rajani’s generation was different. Theirs was the first to grow up in a world in which a full third of hunters were myxte. Theirs was the first to have a myxte Cursed Chief of hunters. Theirs was the first to feel secure in their Cursedhood.

Secure, though, only up to a point. The myxte might be Cursed, and feel Cursed, and be accepted as Cursed, but that didn’t mean they were quite as Cursed as the old-Tabled. And if Rajani considered it from that point of view, Chief’s behavior made more sense. He wanted Rajani as a fellow myxte Cursed to behave herself before the old-Tabled Cursed. When she failed to do so, he would feel that he had to punish her, or risk looking like he favored the myxte Cursed – and hence antagonize old-Tabled Cursed Tables like Pratap’s.

But why did Chief – not to mention the rest of his generation – feel so concerned about currying favor with the old-Tabled Cursed? It was true that the old-Tabled Cursed had a legitimacy that the myxte Cursed lacked. They were taken more seriously. But they weren’t dangerous. Their ancestors had been the ones to welcome in the initial emigrants in the first place!

Frustrated because she couldn’t make her humiliation make sense, Rajani turned her thoughts away from Chief to Gipth. “I met your uncle inside the holy place,” she said to Jiat.

“He told me.”

“Why don’t you leave him?” she asked. “I don’t have a choice about Chief. But you’re older than I am. You could start your own Table.”

Jiat shook his head. “My uncle knows not to touch me. I made that clear several years ago. But my cousins, his children, are young still. I can’t take them away from him to a new Table. And if I’m not there to push back when he loses his temper…” he shrugged.

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He didn’t need to finish his sentence for Rajani to understand. Lead hunters exercised a good deal of authority. Even abusive ones retained rights over their Table members.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she said, thinking about Chief, about Jiat’s uncle, about Pratap. “Hunters can get away with anything because of their status.”

“Right.”

Rajani ran her fingers through her close-cropped hair. “Hunt’s Table,” she swore.

“There has to be a way to stop them,” Jiat said.

It was as if Jiat had read her mind. Rajani gave him an appraising gaze. He met her eyes. There was a conviction in his face that Rajani liked.

A sudden instinct guided her. “Next Gather’s Day – not tomorrow, but next week – can you meet me here again?”

“Yes.”

“There are others who may want to come, too.” Rajani thought of Kebet, Lainla, maybe Abha.

“As long as they won’t report us.”

Rajani nodded. Jiat was right. Only those who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut could be invited.

“Rajani-am!” Her cousin Soti was calling for her from the other side of the rubber forge.

“Lainla-am sent me, it’s time for dinner!”

“I should go,” said Jiat.

“Me too.” A half-smile touched Rajani’s lips. “Gather be with you tonight.”

His crooked smirk reflected her own. “And with you as well.”

***

Abha was busy that next Gather’s Day, but Rajani didn’t mind. For this kind of meeting, the fewer the better. She was therefore dismayed when she arrived and discovered that Kebet had brought along his cousin Yathi. When Rajani gave him a look, he shrugged. “I couldn’t shake her.”

“Oh, shut up, Bet,” Lainla said, grinning. Rajani watched as Lainla and Yathi greeted each other with enthusiasm. Despite their divergent vocations – Yathi, a lexikost, and Lainla, a hunter – their childhood friendship had persisted.

“This is a good location,” said Jiat, looking around. “If we stay facing the rubber forge, our voices will be muffled.”

“Muffled?” Yathi echoed. Her eyes widened under her glasses. “Kebet didn’t tell me we were going to be discussing anything Tabu.”

“We aren’t,” Kebet said. “Rajani told me we were going to talk about the bad turn the hunters have taken. Especially Chief. I can’t wait to tell the lodge mother moot about how much of a bastard he’s been.”

Rajani shook her head. “I don’t think telling the lodge mothers about Chief will change anything.”

“Why not?”

“A Chief’s authority during trainings and hunts is about as sacred as a lead hunter’s authority over his Table. No lodge mother will touch either of those spheres.”

“Rajani is right,” said Jiat. “The lodge mother moot doesn’t have as much influence as people think. Besides, the problem isn’t just Chief. It’s the hunters at large. You all heard what Pratap did to that Gather’s Child girl. Nothing is going to happen to him because nobody holds hunters accountable.”

“But how could we change that?” Yathi asked.

Rajani had spent the last week trying to think of an answer to that question. “We need to find a way for the Cursed to be less dependent on the hunters.”

Lainla looked up sharply. “And how would that work?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rajani admitted. “But I know that the hunters have too much power, and that the Cursed need the hunters too much to insist on change. The only way forward is for the Cursed to need the hunters less.”

For a moment Rajani was afraid her friends would respond with pity, or worse, condescension. Oh, Rajani, she could hear them say. Is this because of what Chief Bikash did to you? We know you’re upset, but don’t you think you’re taking things too far?

“Could a true hunter think otherwise?” Jiat demanded. “Let’s think. What do we need hunters for?”

Rajani felt a rush of gratitude for Jiat as the others chimed in. “We protect our Table members from idiots like Pratap.” “We escort outcasts to the castra-dome and arrange for the run.” “Hunters do a lot. They feed us, they clothe us, they even provide us our currency.”

“Say more,” Rajani said, her interest piqued by the last contribution from Yathi. Maybe it hadn’t been a mistake for Kebet to bring her. Yathi was, after all, an economics lexikost. Out of all of them, she would know best how reliant the Cursed were on the hunters.

“Well, to start, if we don’t have hunters, we don’t eat.”

“Give them your lecture, the one you give to your students about how the Cursed economic system works at large,” Kebet said. “It’s one of her best,” he added to the rest of the group.

“It’s kind of long,” Yathi said, flushing.

“That’s fine,” Rajani said. “It’s better if we have the whole picture.”

“Okay, well, like I said, the hunters hunt the mammoles, and then they divide up the catch by Table – but proportionately, so that a Table with ten members gets twice as much as a Table with five members. Each Table budgets the amount it receives to make sure it has enough to last the whole rainsoon season. Whatever is left over after the budgeting is the surplus.

“A share of the surplus, the holy portion, is given to the Gather’s Children. The rest of it we can use to trade for services. All the Cursed who aren’t hunters have to choose a profession that contributes to the Cursed at large, but we don’t have to devote all our time to it. Whatever extra time we have left over after our set service hours, we can trade for extra meat. That is, if anyone wants a service from us.”

“Oh, so that’s why Tables with physicians always seem to have plenty,” Lainla said.

Yathi nodded. “Their services are always in demand. Economic lexikosts, like me, not so much. Especially since I specialize in comparing the Cursed with the overbelters. No one finds that interesting but me.”

“Do the overbelters do it very differently?” Kebet asked.

“Oh, yes. I mean, just to start, they use non-perishable items as currency, which means they can stockpile wealth and pass it down.”

“They do?” Kebet asked. “But we trade with the Xhota for consumable goods.”

“I think the Xhota just do that with the Cursed. Among themselves, overbelters use bioplastic coins.”

Rajani was no longer listening. Lainla’s point earlier had caught her mind. Physicians could trade healthcare for meat from other Tables. They could thus provide for themselves. They didn’t need to rely as much on their Table’s hunters.

If the non-hunter Cursed could emulate them…

But how? Non-hunters couldn’t take down mammoles. During dry seasons, they could and did harvest plicatus berries and wildflowers, but not at quantities high enough to replace mammole meat.

Rajani decided to pose the puzzle to the others. “Do you think another food source could be found?”

They looked at her. “Like what?” Kebet asked.

Rajani shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Wait.” Yathi looked uneasy. “You mean you’re serious? You actually want to find a way to undercut the entire purpose of the hunters?”

Rajani and Jiat exchanged a glance. “We just want to need them less,” he said lightly.

Yathi’s brow was furrowed. “I don’t know about this.”

“We’re just talking,” Rajani said.

Yathi glanced at the water clock on top of the rubber forge. “It’s noontide. The Gather’s Day feasting is about to begin. We should go.”

Without bidding them farewell, Yathi turned and walked away. Rajani, grim-faced, motioned for the others to follow her. “I’ll let you know when we’re going to meet again,” she said.

Nobody answered.